Sarah Belle Luella Mae (Inscribed first edition)

Author: Miller, Nolan
Title: Sarah Belle Luella Mae (Inscribed first edition)
Publication: Detroit: Lotus Press, 1929
Edition: First edition

Description: Inscribed by the author "For Katherine - May 3, 1929" to upper flyleaf. An attractive, artisically-printed book, almost certainly produced in a small edition (other Lotus Press publications were issued in editions of 135 to 215 copies). Publisher's blindstamped black cloth. Octavo. 56 pp. Decorated with text ornaments in black and red. A bit of toning to endpapers and some offsetting to a few leaves. In the publisher's printed dust jacket, a very nice example despite sunning to spine. A Near Fine copy in like dust jacket.

The first book by the Black American author and academic Nolan Miller (1907 - 2006), published when he was just twenty-two and collecting the short family dramas "Sarah Belle: A Village Romance" and "Luella Mae: The Reunion." Miller was a graduate of Wayne State University and later a faculty member at Antioch College in Ohio. He went on went on to write several novels and became a founding editor of the Antioch Review, one of the preeminent literary magazines in the United States, serving on its editorial board for over thirty years.

The Lotus Press of Detroit, Michigan issued just a few titles between 1928 and 1930, including works by Saul K. Padover and William Ellery Leonard. This was not the same publishing outfit as the Lotus Press founded in 1972 by longtime Detroit Poet Laureate Naomi Long Madgett to publish the work of Black poets, but there may be some connection between the two Lotus Presses that we were unable to determine. Regardless, the present book is both an attractive example of American small press output in the early twentieth century and a scarce work of Black fiction.

OCLC records only five copies, all in Michigan. Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket.

Seller ID: 7220

Subject: BIPOC, Signed Books